Julia Smith here, guest blogger currently living in the “foodie” paradise of New Orleans. Well, it’s a culinary paradise for most, anyway: fresh gulf seafood (as long as the oil is kept at bay), andouille sausage, crawfish etouffeé, shrimp and catfish po’ boys, alligator on a stick… whatever combination of spices and sea creatures you can imagine, it’s been concocted in Cajun/Creole cooking. Tourists come to this city for the cuisine and I spend all my time attempting to avoid it: I’m a vegetarian (meaning I eat no animals of any kind) and I think I picked the worst place to live while maintaining this lifestyle. Nevertheless, I’m sticking to my guns… which means I mostly cook at home and (yes, I’ll admit it) eat a lot of Taco Bell. But I enjoy eating out as much as the next person and I love trying new restaurants. However, sometimes my attempt to expand my restaurant rolodex backfires and results in a day filled with culinary disappointments—a day like today.
It all started when I arranged to have lunch with friends at a local Indian restaurant, Nirvana. I fasted all morning in preparation for a delicious Indian buffet with plenty of vegetarian options and endless naan. And really, when you’re that hungry, what’s better than an Indian buffet? Anyway, we all arrived at the restaurant only to discover they’re closed on Mondays (I really must remember to check hours online before I make plans… also, why is everything in NOLA closed on Mondays?). We ended up driving down the street to the Magazine St. Po’ Boy and Sandwich Shop where I indulged in a grilled cheese po’ boy with fries and a Coke float. It was not worth the $12+ I paid for it… could have made the grilled cheese at home; the fries were bland; Coke float was in a Styrofoam cup. Lame.
By evening, I still hadn’t shaken off my indignation at overpaying for mediocre-at-best food. I figured the perfect remedy would be to make my own delectable delight at home. I decided to try a recipe from the famous Julie/Julia Project blog (posted by Julie, saying it was her mom’s recipe) that I had been eyeing for some time—cheese biscuits.
The recipe calls for a cup of butter—that’s two sticks, for all you non-bakers… and it’s a lot of butter. That’s usually a good thing in a recipe. Another great part of the recipe is the 8 oz. of cheese. It also calls for two cups of rice krispies. Weird, but I decided not to question it and just go with the recipe. The only other stand-out ingredient is the cayenne pepper, but I love spice so I thought nothing of it before I made the biscuits. Read the recipe. They sound scrumptious, don’t they?
They are not. In fact, they tasted so strange I hardly wanted more than a few bites. And it’s really too bad because the recipe makes about two dozen biscuits.
First, they did not rise or get fluffy. They remained flat, like cookies. That’s fine, except don’t call it a biscuit if isn’t one… this is not England. When I bit into one at first, it tasted good: buttery, soft, flaky. But then the rice krispies hit you and they do not make the texture more interesting; they make you wonder why the hell you thought it was a good idea to put breakfast cereal in bread dough. The worst part was probably the cayenne pepper. It comes as a very strong and unwelcome aftertaste and this is coming from someone who eats the spiciest of curries. This may be the first recipe I’ve made that I truly disliked. And now I have 24 crunchy, spicy biscuits and no one in my household will eat them… we can’t even feed them to the dog because of the cayenne. My solution? I’ll bring them to work tomorrow and leave them in the lunch room… abandon all hope, ye who decide to try one of my biscuits.
I was so let down by the nasty biscuits and so distraught over the loss of two sticks of butter and 8 oz. of cheese that I made chocolate chip cookies out of cake mix afterwards, a fail-safe recipe. But I’ll save that one for another day of lost culinary experiences in the life of a vegetarian in New Orleans.
- Julia Smith
Oh, man - your article seriously had me LOLing. My stomach hurt by the time I got to the end of it!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, ain't nothing wrong a little (or even a lot) of Taco Bell. Also, the whole "closed on Mondays" thing happened to me too a few months back. I tried to get some Chinese with friends and not only was my first choice (Taiwan Teahouse) closed, but the plan B was also! Defeated (it apparently wasn't in the cards to have Chinese that night - why test the gods, we figured), we gave up and slunk into a nearby Applebee's. NOT the meal I had envisioned when making the plans.
That naan, which I've never heard of before, looks crazy good - too bad you weren't able to have any. And yuck, a coke float in styrofoam sounds disgusting. There is this new ice cream place in Broad Ripple where you can get floats made with any fountain drink - very tasty.
Regarding the cheddar biscuits: ick. You're right, they do look like cookies, and if there's a weird cereal texture with a spicy aftertaste...no thanks. Don't let this sour you on the dish in general, though - the cheddar biscuits at my restaurant are the bomb, both looking AND tasting as they should. Maybe you somehow made it incorrectly, or maybe Julie's mom's recipe just sucks.
Your plan to leave them in the lunchroom is hilarious - you'll have to let me know if anyone bites. At least you got to have cake-cookies (a classic), but yes, that IS a lot of wasted butter and cheese. Better luck next time!
By the way, have you made anything else from Julie's blog? If so, how'd it turn out?
Haha, so glad you enjoyed it! At least SOMETHING good came from this yucky recipe.
ReplyDeleteI HATE when restaurants are closed. It's so hard to come to a decision in the first place about where you want to eat, so by the time you've decided, you're really stuck on that choice... and then it's closed and you have to start all over again. And NOLA, with its fucking business hours. Places are closed at the most random times. "Closed from noon to 4 on Thursdays" and stuff like that.
OMG, Jeff, naan. You have to have naan. I bought some at Whole Foods the other day, I wanted it so bad.
When are we going to the new ice cream place??
Someone DID bite--one of the interns loved them and I gave her the entire batch. Better than throwing them out!
I haven't made anything else from Julie's blog, but that may be the only recipe she has... most of her stuff is out of Julia Child's cookbook so she doesn't post the recipe. I haven't read enough of the blog to find anything else, and now I know not to go looking!